September 17, 2007

Utterz is the first way you can instantly blog your experiences, thoughts and ideas, anywhere, using all the capabilities of your mobile phone. Located in Maynard, MA (gotta have blog love for the locals), Utterz officially launched this morning and announced a $4 million investment. Although it's a bit "cow" focused, the concept seems pretty cool. I'll be giving it a whirl today to see how it works out and if there is any room for it in my social networking arsenal.

Here's a link to the announcement in the The Boston Globe today. Check out my "Utterz" (OK...that just doesn't sound good, but it's better than teats) username = SociallyAdept. My first "Utter" is a pretty cool video with a Boston sports tie in.

August 16, 2007

I stumbled across This Next Blog a long time ago and loved the content. Unfortunately, I never captured the feed and it was one of the many blogs and websites that fell through the cracks and off my incredibly large radar screen. Until this week...

Not sure where I saw it, but I heard the rumblings about This Next/This World, a mashup of google maps showing people all over the world finding great purchases online. It was launched last week and the reviews have been incredible - "MarketingVox, who dubbed us a ‘Marketer’s Wet Dream and Yahoo! Tech who said we are ” … easy to use and a pleasure to get lost in.” Awww, thanks. Wired also thinks we are pretty nifty saying ” (from This Next Blog)

For the past three days, I have been watching the map and it is absolutely amazing what people are viewing. I would guarantee within 5 minutes you see something and say, "I want that... but I never knew it existed!" If you're in need of a Hello Kitty Pet Carrier, Transparent Toaster (only concept, sorry), or a Zebra rug you can find it here!

I need to do some more research on this, but this was just too good not to share!

April 23, 2007

Morgan Pozgar is LG's National Texting Champion and winner of $25,000! I've been eagerly anticipating the conclusion of this contest since my previous post (read it here). Morgan, who averages 8,000 text messages a month, successfully sent a text that read "Supercalifragalisticexpealidocious" from Mary Poppins fame in 15 SECONDS(I probably spelled it incorrectly, but who really cares)!

This is an amazing feat for a 13 year old, but LG unfortunately dropped the ball. The site promoting the TXT Message Championship hasn't changed since the contest ended, LG is still featuring contest entries on the homepage, and there is no live footage of the event anywhere!

Why invest so much time and effort into an event only to have it go basically unnoticed? Traditional media picked it up in some places, but they buried the story in their "Odds and Ends" section. Maybe the 2008 contest will have a bit more interaction.

A tip for LG... why not let people submit potential messages for the contest? Sure, Supercalfarag.u.get.the.idea was tough, but this is the age of social media... engage the audience!

April 12, 2007

Picking up where we left off yesterday, what is a link on an A-Listers blog worth to you? I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and trying to come up with a method for understanding the value of being linked to by well established bloggers.

In my previous post, I mentioned that Jaffe and Rubel average about 15,500 visitors a month between them (according to Compete... would love to know the real numbers if anyone has them). For kicks, let's add some other MVB Contestants:

So, the total visitors for just four of the 32 participating blogs is 67,500. Not bad. Now, if they are anywhere near as popular as Socially Adept (strong sarcasm there) then they probably see about a 50% rate of visitors clicking posted links. Essentially, the winner of this contest would have 67,500 people see their name and 33,750 people actually click through to their site. Remember, this is only 4 of the 32 contestants.

If we were to assume that all 32 contestants had relatively similar success, than the number may actually be around 270,000 people actually viewing your blog. Here's the great part about this though... those 270,000 people actually are interested in your topic! They aren't just being pushed an ad on a page where there is competing content.

What's the cost then? In order to get a 270,000 click through rate on a banner ad (or similar) which normally receives about a 4% click through rate, you'd need to purchase 6,750,000 impressions. Anyone want to take a guess at the cost?

Anyway, I won't get into too much detail and I am sure many people will point out the flaws in my concept, but it is interesting to think about. Does anyone else have any ideas? I'd love to hear additional thoughts about this process. I'll follow up with more details on this in a Part 3.

April 09, 2007

Apple announced today that it has sold it's 100 millionth iPod. OK... so now what? As a Nano owner, I may be one of the few who barely uses the thing; mainly because I can't hook it up to anything I have or want to buy (I probably could, but I've invested enough). I also had an MP3 phone from LG and never listened to one song on it (I used it for something unusual... phone calls!)

As a social media advocate, one might think that I was all about this stuff, but I prefer other tactics for getting the media, music, video, etc. I need. The last thing I need is something else to carry around with me. Here is a list of the 10 things I would carry with me on a daily basis in regard to necessities and media if I had more pockets.

10) Wallet (Although, now that Coke will let me "pay at the pump" with my Mastercard, I may not need that anymore)

7) Cigarettes and Lighter (yes... I am one of the "bad people" banished outside, puffing away)

6) Watch (Sure... everything else tells time, but fashion is fashion)

5) iPod (The nano is small so you think it would be fine... but it always falls out of my pocket - I hear Nike has a new clothing line to fix this, but I am not sure it is office approved)

4) Sirius Sportster (This thing pisses me off... it barely works when it's cold so I have to carry it in and out of the car. With a 15 minute commute... it's no longer worth it and has been officially written off as a waste of money)

3) Laptop

2) Carmex (The winter killed me this year - They have a good site by the way...check it out and become a jar head)

1) Camcorder (There's a YouTube video out there waiting to happen)

So... you may have 10, you may have 5, but I am at the point where my pockets are over flowing and decisions have to be made. As a result, the iPod, Sirius, and Camcorder get left behind. It's all a shame.

Sofia Loginova, an 18 year old from Quincy, MA launched a Social Network called B4class.com. Right on the home page is a smiling photo of Sofia who most certainly will generate some attention of her own, but today's news focuses on a prank that may have been set up to generate a buzz about B4class.

According to Boston.com, four suspicious backpacks were left in Newton North High School (in my town) filled with newspaper and adorned with the B4class logo. Being as this is only a few weeks after this fiasco, you can imagine how some Bostonians reacted to this little stunt inside the school.

The interesting part of this story is that Sofia has managed to give away 2,000 of her logo'd backpacks (allowances must have gone up since I was a kid) and secured over 500 new users. According to the article, Sofia is not using any outside marketing help and is relying on Word of Mouth to generate awareness (you're welcome, Sofia) but I have to think that this kid is getting some help from someone.

As Sofia is not a student at Newton North, I wonder who thought to leave 4 of the bags there? Until then, she had been handing them out in Boston's Faneuil Hall. It will be interesting to see how this story plays out, but the evacuation of an upper class high school outside of Boston should get the name B4class.com on the evening news... for everyone to hear!

March 30, 2007

LG announces the "National Texting Championship" for March 31 and April 21st. Hopefully, someone will Twitter the event as well! I'd love to have a play by play of this event. This is a great branding event and I am sure LG will get some good buzz out of it. I can't wait to hear how fast some people can text some of the longer messages.

Hopefully, LG will invest a little more into this event. Right now, they only have the registration page up, but if they are smart, they will video the event and push it out to YouTube. Additionally, they should sign the winner up to utilize for future events and advertising. Remember the kid with the Rubix Cube? I think some people will be fascinated by what some of today's kids can do with SMS.

All in all, I love the idea, but would have liked to see better execution with more Social Media involvement. This was the perfect event for it.